Mission To Murder (Tourist Trap Mysteries no. 2)by Lynn CahoonRead: March, 2018Rating: ☆☆☆/ 5 Format: Kindle​Okay. I really, really want to like more cozy mysteries, but I have such a hard time finding ones that I like. The difficulty with this (and the reason I'm leading so negatively despite having read two of the books in this series) is that I'm divided between things I really like about it, and things that I really don't. ​

When I go to the bookstore and browse the cozy mysteries, I feel like I'm choosing between these different concepts and hobbies: so this series, about a woman who runs a coffee-book-shop in a small coastal town looked like a slam dunk. But I don't like it. I didn't like the first one either! So why the hell did I read the second one? Because about 9 months after I was so underwhelmed by the first installment, I got booksick for the setting and scenery in this series and decided to give it another shot. In a nutshell, our MC Jill is the owner of a bookshop/cafe in a small, coastal tourist town where she moved after leaving her big-city-life. She's still viewed as a newcomer by the other townspeople, but they're beginning to accept her. In book one, she inherited a big old house (#goals) from her old lady friend Miss Emily, and she discovered the ruins of the old Spanish mission on the property. As she's working to get it certified as a historical site, she's butting heads with the Local Jackass, who runs "The Castle," a historical tourist destination in town. He doesn't want to share funding and other bureaucratic nonsense, so he's trying to bar her from doing that. She goes to ream him out (which the small-town-peeps send up the grapevine mad fast) and the next day he winds up dead. Oopsies! Now, Jill has to clear her name.This isn't a bad set up by any means, but I found that it had all the same issues as the first one.

The author says everything multiple times. She introduces a character and the MC thinks "She's amazing, she gets more done in a day than I do in a week." Then, 4 chapters later, she sees her again and the internal monologue tells you that "she gets more done in an hour than I do in a day." It's the exact same sentence wearing a fake mustache and a hat. I was sitting in my living room, freaking my cat out by shouting "I know!" at my kindle.

The mysteries are really lackluster. The investigation will go through some enjoyable (if formulaic) stages, like sneaking around a yard of shipping crates and sneaking away from a tour group to snoop around. These are things I want from the mystery. But, just like in the first one, the big reveal is full of things that she didn't figure out: they're just revealed to her. She finds all these clues, and then things fall to shit before she settles in to put the pieces together and solve the puzzle. That's so unsatisfying!

The relationship between our amateur detective and the local policeman (proving this is a card-carrying-cozy-mystery) is not very compelling. They got together in the first one and it was alright--I didn't particularly care about it, but it was fine--but in this one they've already settled into a very boring routine, and while there was the material for an interesting test of their relationship (the fact that the MC is the prime suspect for a murder and if she were anyone else she'd have at least been brought in for questioning) this is just mentioned over and over again, and never explored.

That being said, there's a reason I went back and gave the second one a try!

I love the premise. Like, Jill is living my dream life. She retired from some crap-ville corporate law job in the city and opened a bookshop-cafe in a small, Marple-esque coastal town full of secrets and intrigue. This is my if-I-won-the-lottery plan, down to the last detail.

I love the town! I love the setting of Jill as the newcomer to the town that people haven't quite embraced; I love her old historic house that she's renovating; I love that she has this small town drama with the local business committee and all the stuff that goes along with that. I love the setting of these books so much.

These different feelings are fighting each other and landing on a 3 star rating. And to be honest, I'll probably go another 9 months, not find a read-a-like for the setting, and read no. 3. Then complain about it. Don't @ me. (@ me with recommendations for a setting read-a-like, I beg of you.) ​